The feedback continuum: why reducing feedback helps students learn
The effects of feedback are more complex than we often realise. While expertise and mastery is unlikely to develop without feedback it's certainly not true to say that giving feedback results in expertise and mastery. There are few teachers who do not prioritise giving feedback and yet not all teachers' feedback is equally effective. My understanding of the effects of feedback has grown as I've come to accept and internalise the profound differences [...]
Robots, evolution and why schools shouldn't worry about innate skills
It should come as little surprise to hear that some of what human beings can do is innate. That is to say, we are born with various capacities and abilities which appear to be 'hardwired' into our brains. The evolutionary psychologist David Geary talks about such capacities as being either biologically primary or secondary adaptations. Biologically primary adaptations are those that emerge instinctively by virtue of our evolved cognitive structures, whereas biologically [...]
How to observe a lesson
Recently, I was asked by a school to give some feedback on their lesson observation pro forma. My advice was that they shouldn't use it. They were a bit flummoxed (and probably a bit annoyed) as they'd spent quite a while trying to make sure it guided observers to look for the things they felt were especially important for teachers to include. This, I explained, was the problem. If we tell [...]
Call and response
Over the past few years I've spent a lot of time visiting schools to talk about literacy. One of my stock nuggets of advice is that it's worth spending lesson time scaffolding students' speech in order to help them become fluent in academic language. My contention is talk is a powerful cognitive lever and that by getting students to speak in academic language it changes the way they think. If [...]
On gimmicks
What is a gimmick? The dictionary defines it as "a trick or device intended to attract attention, publicity, or trade." So, putting a cartoon tiger on a packet of breakfast cereal in order to attract children's attention is a gimmick. So is repackaging ordinary Shreddies as 'Diamond Shreddies'. In the words of Rory Sutherland, these sorts of gimmicks attempt to solve problems by "tinkering with perception, rather than that tedious, hardworking and [...]
Why Ofsted inspectors shouldn’t give advice
Unfortunately I was unable to attend the recent Learning First conference in Wolverhampton, but I did manage to follow some of the tweets. This one in particular caught my attention: Marilyn Mottram HMI talking about what Ofsted are looking for #LearningFirst pic.twitter.com/MJDrm3cUkf — school data updates (@jpembroke) October 1, 2016 As you can see by reading the thread below the tweet, it's possible that Marylin Mottram didn't actually say this [...]
Why mini-plenaries are a waste of time
Plenary is an interesting word. It originally meant absolute, without reservation or qualification. The pope used to offer plenary indulgences to crusaders absolving them in advance of any sin they committed in the defence of the Holy Land. Later it came mean full, complete or pertaining to all. A meeting or assembly to which all were obliged or expected to attend would be called a plenary. Nowadays, conferences often have plenary [...]
Is our behaviour a choice?
Arguments about free will date back to ancient Greece, but the scientific consensus now tends towards the belief that free will is an illusion. It's become an article of faith in the life sciences that all organisations can be reduced to algorithmic processes written in our genes. We either respond to environmental stimuli either by rapidly and unconsciously processing the best option in terms of survival or through random biochemical blips. [...]
What causes the gender gap in education?
In the 1940s the Belgian philosopher Albert Michotte identified our tendency to believe we could see causality. His book, The Perception of Causality, published in French in 1945 showed how certain very simple visual sequences carry the appearance of causal connectedness. Click this link for an example. This paper is a good recent update on how illusions of causality bias our judgement. Human beings are natural pattern seekers. We see shapes [...]
Better teaching through chemistry?
One of my favourite books of last year was Yuval Noah Harari's magnificent Sapiens. It looks like his new tome, Homo Deus, is going to be just as fascinating if the rest of it lives up to the first couple of chapters. The book charts some of humanity's possible futures but is also an attempt to force readers to rethink their thoughts of the future by exploring and understanding our history. One [...]
What’s the job of a teacher?
One of the sessions I attended at researchED last Saturday was a debate on whether there really is a mental health crisis amongst young people. There were lots of interesting points made and the debate was slightly less polarised than you might expect, but it still turned out fairly predictably with one side saying the crisis is one we've created by pathologising normal feelings and behaviour and the other saying that [...]
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